Sexism lawsuit
The sexism lawsuit (also known as Stern lawsuits ) was an unsuccessful injunction that feminists filed in 1978 to have Stern magazine forbid sexist representations from their point of view .
facts
The lawsuit was preceded by a series of Stern cover images which the plaintiffs believed were degrading to women, e. B. the picture of a scantily clad female buttocks on a bicycle saddle in June 1977 or the back picture of a woman in a string bikini in March 1978. When a poster for the Red Cat nightclub was planned for the title in June 1978, Henri Nannen stopped printing and so instead of a woman doing a lap dance , the title showed two bare-breasted dancers with hats over their barely covered genitals. The direct trigger was a cover picture by photographer Helmut Newton from April 1978. Alice Schwarzer described it in Emma 7/1978, as "[...] a black woman, naked, in her hand a phallic microphone and around the chains - heavy chains".
Litigation
Schwarzer described the photo as a "representation of women as a mere sexual object" and as a violation of the " human dignity of all women". She therefore saw herself as the victim of an insult under Section 185 of the Criminal Code . Therefore, she filed an injunction against the publishing house Gruner + Jahr and against editor-in-chief Henri Nannen , which she justified with a tortious claim under Section 823 (2) BGB . A complaint was also filed with the Press Council .
In the Emma published by her , she urged her readers to also sue. Inge Meysel , Erika Pluhar , Luise Rinser , Margarete Mitscherlich and five other women followed this call . The defendants and critics accused them of an inadmissible popular complaint .
The Hamburg Regional Court dismissed the action on July 26, 1978 ( Az. 74 O 235/78). On the one hand, it included the allegation of the popular lawsuit in the grounds of the judgment. On the other hand, it found that women as a collective cannot be insultable. An insult to a large number of people is only possible if this "majority of people emerges from the general public in such a way that this group of individuals involved is clearly delimited"; for a group of people who make up more than half of the German population, this could not be the case.
literature
- LG Hamburg: “The women” are not a group of people that can be collectively insulted . NJW 1980, 56
- Peter Schlosser: Political show, sexism and overcoming the rigidity of procedural law . Law 1979, 20
- Hermann H. Hollmann: Collective insultable groups of people and popular action on omission . JA 1980, 527
Web links
- Articles and documents on the Stern suit in Emma 7/1978
- FrauenMediaTurm: Chronicle of the new women's movement 1978
- Rudolf Augstein : The women strike back , Der Spiegel 27/1978
- Yvonne Schymura: "Emma" vs. "Stern": attack on the men's press , one day on July 12, 2013